2012 promete...

Ainda não está bem enterrado 2011 e já se anunciam fortes lançamentos para 2012.

With the courtesy of Uncut...


Tuesday 3rd January 2012

A Happy New Year to you all. We're back at our work stations today, refreshed after the Christmas break and its chuckling bounty of Vicar Of Dibley and other vintage TV comedy repeats (oh, how we laughed!). We are of course now revving up for 2012 and its many onrushing excitements, prominent among them the new issue of Uncut, which has just gone on sale, with a cover story on the mighty Creedence Clearwater Revival, who in the early 70s were just about the biggest band in the world.

In a timely enough manner, there's also a look forward to some of the major releases coming our way over the next several months, including new albums from Paul Weller, which he tells us in all apparent seriousness was partly influenced by Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music and in other instances by what used to be called krautrock. Among other other Uncut favourites talking about their new records in the issue are Patti Smith, John Lydon, Paul McCartney, John Cale, Damon Albarn, Devendra Banhart, Wayne Coyne, Dylan LeBlanc and Jason Pierce.

Elsewhere, we are in Nashville for an exclusive interview with The Black Keys, following the release of their terrific El Camino album, spend some predictably bizarre time with Lawrence, frontman, variously, of Felt, Denim and Go Kart Mozart, whose career is the subject of a remarkable new documentary, Lawrence Of Belgravia, and pay tribute to Jackie Leven, the uncompromising and brilliant Scottish singer-songwriter who died recently of cancer.

We also celebrate the 40th anniversary of Curtis Mayfield's Superfly, Teenage Fanclub tell us about the making of "Everything Flows" and uber-producer Daniel Lanois talks us through some of the seminal albums he's worked on, among them Dylan's Oh Mercy and Time Out Of Mind, Neil Young's Le Noise, Emmylou Harris' Wrecking Ball, Peter Gabriel's So and U2's The Joshua Tree.

In the Uncut Review, meanwhile, we get pretty excited about Leonard Cohen's Old Ideas, his first studio album for eight years and the first solo album from The Hold Steady's Craig Finn. There's also a surely essential four-CD Howlin' Wolf box set, a four-disc, 75 track collection of Bob Dylan covers by such as Pete Townshend, Elvis Costello, Lucinda Williams, Mark Knopfler and, er Sting, the proceeds from which are intended for Amnesty International and the entire PiL back catalogue is reconsidered by David Quantick, who elsewhere regales us with an hilarious account of a colourful meeting in Milan, some years ago, with Grace Jones.

All the best for now,

Allan